THE CRANKY OLD MAN
Random thoughts and stuff from a cranky old man. Humor (maybe)and satire, mostly stuff from a confused head.
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Thursday, April 4, 2013

PEEING AT TAO

PEEING AT TAO

Entrance to Tao

Many readers
may find it surprising that the Cranky Old Man is not particularly
sophisticated.I am not a rube.I am familiar with and adhere to most rules
of etiquette and decorum.I just do not
do fancy well.

Years ago in
one of my other lives, I was invited with my wife to Tao, a fancy NYC
restaurant. Tao is an Asian style restaurant.It is one of the fanciest, most expensive restaurants New York
City.It is a very popular celebrity
hangout.It is not as I was immediately
chastised for calling it, a Chow Mein Palace.

Dining area in Tao

We were
invited by a wealthy friend of the unbalanced wife.I could not have afforded the tab
otherwise.Well I could have, but I am
simply not programed to shell out anything over $30 for an entrée.At Tao, $30 is an appetizer.The restaurant’s décor was spectacular, the
food was fabulous, the service excellent and the bill did not go to me.It was a very enjoyable dinner.

At some
point in the evening I needed to use the restroom.At Tao you say “Excuse me; I’ll be back in a
moment,” not “Be right back, I gotta pee.” I learned this piece of etiquette via
a very humbling and painful elbow-to- the-rib correction.

Tao is a
large restaurant, but I found the restrooms with little effort.Determining which room to use was not so easy.One door was marked “Otoko,” with a weird
Asian symbol resembling a stick horse. The
other was marked “Onna,” with a weird stick figure resembling a cow.I stood perplexed for a while until a young
lady exited the door marked Otoko.I
assumed the stick horse represented women in the Asian world, so I entered the
stick cow room.

“EEK!! GET OUT YOU IDIOT, THIS IS THE
LADIES ROOM!!”

My
assumption was flawed.

Apparently I
was not the only idiot; the lady I saw coming out of the stick horse room was just
as stupid.

I realized
my mistake and quickly dragged my Otoko ass into the Otoko room.The Otoko room was more complex than any Otoko
room I have ever been in.

This room
had what looked like a sink with constant running water from a fancy faucet.This sink spilled over to another smaller sink
which then spilled over to a drainage trough.Was it a fancy sink, or a fancy urinal?Opposite the sink/urinal was a large wall beautifully decorated with
expensive tile. Water ran continuously
down the wall and collected at the bottom in another drainage trough.As I am not sophisticated I did not know if I
should piss in the sink/urinal, or piss on the decorative wall.

Fortunately
for me Tao has a man in the Otoko room whose job is to point to the wall and
say “You pee over here sir” and when you are done and wash up in the
sink/urinal he hands you a towel.

I thought I
was a big shot when I handed him a dollar for his service.Turns out in Tao I should have given him two
dollars.

What is it with women and fancy restaurants. My Mrs. C. wants me to take her to a place called the French Laundry in Napa because it's highly touted on the Food Channel. When I consider the "outcome" of this overpriced food the expense hardly seems worth it.

Maybe it's cuz I'm a girl but I can't wrap my head around a place, THAT FANCY...making you pee in the open against a wall at all. I sort of assumed real fancy men's rooms at least let you pee in a stall. Then again, if someone offered to let me pee in a nice fountain, maybe I'd enjoy it.

If you had been in Japan, you might have gone into the only bathroom available: men and women share bathrooms in some establishments and the urinals are on the wall which the women must walk past in order to get to the women's stalls. :)

I am very much in favor of self-explanatory rest rooms. It is not a place I go for confusion, or, in this case, Confucian. Not too long ago I went to the bathroom in a nice restaurant and did a little dance, waving my hands all over the place, until someone else showed me how to flush (you push the handle), get water and soap (push the handle), and obtain a paper towel (push the handle). I think she thought she was helping the handicapped. She was right.

LOL! That's funny Joe. I saw Tao in Las Vegas but was too scared to walk in. Not because of the cost (well, yeah, that too I guess) but because it's a regular Kim Kardashian hangout. The whole thing seemed quite overwhelming.Leanne @ Deep Fried Fruit

Yet if the restaurant is good enough, the staff will never make you feel out of place. We were in a restaurant in France which had such a complicated menu that we weren't sure which parts we were meant to order off the set menu, a sensational summer truffle extravaganza (all of them apparently) and the waiter said, in a tone implying Europeans were nuts, not that we were uncouth and bumpkins, "Some people around here like to order both a fish course and a meat course for their meal", with a shrug.

Leave if to the high and mighty people of great wealth to complicate a most simple, basic function. I think the internationally recognized symbols for man and woman should suffice (the circle with either a plus or an arrow pointing upward). I know of more than a few people who have guessed incorrectly at the clever wording and symbology on doors, and it can be quite embarrassing. Why leave your customers guessing. The craziest thing was when I lived in Germany many years ago and public toilets often had dispensers in the stalls where you had to pay for toilet tissue... now that's downright mean! No wonder those people don't smile much!!

Man, what an experience. Decades ago when I lived in Japan I made the mistake of walking into someone's home (I was fresh off the airplane after a 10 hour flight) and wore my shoes. My hostess shouted, "Eeeaaah," which someone explained meant, "Take off your damn shoes." The point was duly noted, and I never did that again while on Japanese soil. And to this day, I rarely wear shoes in my own house.

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About Me

I am 70 years old, I have 4 children 45,42,40 and 18;and 5 grandchildren 13-6
. Divorced twice, married three times. I worked on Wall Street for 40 years after graduating from Lafayette College in 1968. I have turned to writing as since retirement I needed something to tell people "What the F*** I do." Published one book "Maybe It's Just Me!" available at Amazon, soon to release my second, "I Used To Be Stupid."
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